Petty Music Bitchery

[Sister_Gothique]

Yahoo Radio, or Launchcast....What the fuck happened to it? As far as I can see, now it's sponsored by CBS and it sucks. On each station they play maybe 20(at most) of the most mainstream songs in the genre. When they first started Launch Music they had TONS of songs and I loved all the random shit they'd throw at me. It's where I found a lot of the bands I listen to now(Corvus Corax is the first that comes to mind...I think it's really where I started listening to Morrissey, too). I went a few months without really playing it and I just came back recently, having an urge for new music and THIS is what I get.

..No, wait...Let me just tell you..Here's the music lineup for the 90s rock station: Smashing Pumpkins-1979, *about 4 minutes of bad, repetitive commercials*, Live-I Alone, *pause for a good 20 minutes as I have a near panic attack due to the spider the size of a fucking BUICK being this
|  | far away from me....and my fellow valiantly slaughtering the beast with an old magazine; "My heeeeerrroo" *,  Alice In Chains-Man In The Box, Candlebox-Far Behind, Garbage- I Think I'm Paranoid, Matchbox 20- 3AM.........I think you get my point. It's bad, it's bland and it's crap EVERYONE knows.

I remember being about 13-14 and Launchcast was one of the most awesome things for me. I'd sit there for hours just looking for new music, rating this and that to see what new stuff they'd send my way and rating other stuff to make sure certain things NEVER got played again(Mostly Metallica and ACDC...and all things country). You have no rating system with this new one---*pause*....This is the 7th time I've heard Scar Tissue within the past 2 days!----As I was saying....there's no rating system whatsoever...all I get is a skip button, pause button and the ability to change genres. It's just...disappointing. So, I guess it's back to Youtube, while I search for a better means of obtaining new music.

*twitches as Enter Sandman comes on*
SG, Going to kill a motherfucker...

[AFK]

Have you ever checked out Last.fm?  That's what I use for music at work and it's great.  They have this feature where you just type in the name of an artist you like and it will play songs from that artist and similar artists.  There are no commercials, and there seems to be a good variety of music on there.  There are also individual artist pages where you can stream songs although it doesn't play continuously that way.  You can also get some free downloads for some artists.  Oh and then there is the whole Facebook-esque social-networking aspect of it which I don't even really use.  But anyway, it's a cool way to stream some music at work and check out some new music as well.  [/plug]

But I totally understand where you are coming from.  I have a somewhat similar beef with Sirius-XM as far as their content.  When I first got my radio, it was before the merger.  They had a really great 90's Alternative-Post Modern station called Lithium.  What was great about it was that it really focused on the college-rock, quirkier bands from that era.  Now, post merger, it's basically all of the big mainstream grunge and alterna-rock hits.  Boring. 

[Cainad (dec.)]

www.pandora.com


This neat thing chooses music for you based on how you rate the songs they give you. Eventually you'll start getting a lot of repeats, but then it's as easy as starting a new channel based on a different song or artist.

[Cramulus]

http://www.simplynoise.com/

much better than mainstream radio - you're welcome!

[Sister_Gothique]

Thanks so much guys!

@RWHN: That sounds pretty cool, I'll definitely have to check that out.

@Cainad: I actually know that one, it didn't like my laptop, so I hadn't even really thought about it since...and now that my laptop is temporarily bust-the-fuck-up, I should probably get back to that.

@Cramulus: "Focus easier...with better quality white noise".....Lol

[Kai]

Was trying that white noise generator out, and I noticed that if you set it to red/brown noise turn it very low and osculate it, sounds very much like the ocean is just across the road and out of sight. Very nice.

[Cramulus]

btw, lay off Tom Petty, he rules!

[Triple Zero]

Was trying that white noise generator out, and I noticed that if you set it to red/brown noise turn it very low and osculate it, sounds very much like the ocean is just across the road and out of sight. Very nice.

ocean sound, like most noise sounds in nature is actually pink noise. but if you play pink noise unfiltered, it sounds more like a waterfall. so if you want it "far away", you need a kind of reverb. not sure what kind, I bet LMNO knows, he lurves the reverb

or, I suppose with the oscillating, you get this changing sound like rolling of the waves? to accurately model that I'd use windowed pink noise with a slow randomized granular synth. with moar reverb on top, of course.

[LMNO]

[Kai]

Was trying that white noise generator out, and I noticed that if you set it to red/brown noise turn it very low and osculate it, sounds very much like the ocean is just across the road and out of sight. Very nice.

ocean sound, like most noise sounds in nature is actually pink noise. but if you play pink noise unfiltered, it sounds more like a waterfall. so if you want it "far away", you need a kind of reverb. not sure what kind, I bet LMNO knows, he lurves the reverb

or, I suppose with the oscillating, you get this changing sound like rolling of the waves? to accurately model that I'd use windowed pink noise with a slow randomized granular synth. with moar reverb on top, of course.

My hearing is sorta screwy right now, so thats maybe why the red/brown noise sounds better. Yeah, the oscilation imitates the rolling of the waves, slowly getting louder then dropping off and quieting till the next one comes along. It's not quite perfect, but it was still very nice. I don't think I need reverb. Most of the sound of the waves doesn't have an echoey feeling from a distance.

[Triple Zero]

not all reverb is echoey, it just adds the feeling of a particular kind of "space" to a sound. for example, I have a reverb preset in Ableton called "forest floor", which makes the sound appear spacious, but also dampened and doesn't add echo. A particular reverb setting could also make something sound "far away", for instance.

[Kai]

not all reverb is echoey, it just adds the feeling of a particular kind of "space" to a sound. for example, I have a reverb preset in Ableton called "forest floor", which makes the sound appear spacious, but also dampened and doesn't add echo. A particular reverb setting could also make something sound "far away", for instance.

Okay.

I wonder how close a person could approximate the sound of the ocean so it was indistinguishable from the real sound of the ocean starting only from a recording of noise. I know you could get it close, but how close?

[Triple Zero]

I think you could get it really really close.

Basically you can record the impulse response of a space, by, well, recording an impulse (a single clap of the hands usually suffices), including the echos or "whoosh" it generates. Use that recording to convolve any other sound and you will get an exact reconstruction as if the sound was played in that space from the position where your hands clapped, recorded from where you recorded it.
So you don't do that near the ocean, because the actual waves make to much noise to record your impulse, but you find some quiet place at night that looks like it would give the proper atmosphere (say, some sandy hills i dunno), have somebody stand 3 hills away from your recording device and generate an impulse (perhaps hit something with a hammer, if a clap is not loud enough to record over that distance).

So that gives you the perfect reverb to use.

From there it is just modelling a rolling of waves of different sizes according to a statistical distribution, for a realistic sounding sea you can get away with a gaussian distribution. technically that would have a too low probability for the occasional "really big wave", but I don't think anybody would be able to tell, and besides, it probably makes the sound more even, soothing and pleasant to listen.
and then for one wave get some pink noise, fade it in slowly and then out slightly quicker, speed and amplitude based on the above mentioned distribution. it would probably be handy to have an actual recording of ocean waves to look at, and see what sort of curve the general wave follows and roughly give your volume envelope the same shape.

Now layer lots of these waves together randomly, and apply your reverb.

If you want even more accuracy, there are all sorts of physical models of ocean waves available, starting out with simple stuff such as the above mentioned statistical method, but you can also actually simulate the waves if you really must

[Kai]

I think you could get it really really close.

Basically you can record the impulse response of a space, by, well, recording an impulse (a single clap of the hands usually suffices), including the echos or "whoosh" it generates. Use that recording to convolve any other sound and you will get an exact reconstruction as if the sound was played in that space from the position where your hands clapped, recorded from where you recorded it.
So you don't do that near the ocean, because the actual waves make to much noise to record your impulse, but you find some quiet place at night that looks like it would give the proper atmosphere (say, some sandy hills i dunno), have somebody stand 3 hills away from your recording device and generate an impulse (perhaps hit something with a hammer, if a clap is not loud enough to record over that distance).

So that gives you the perfect reverb to use.

From there it is just modelling a rolling of waves of different sizes according to a statistical distribution, for a realistic sounding sea you can get away with a gaussian distribution. technically that would have a too low probability for the occasional "really big wave", but I don't think anybody would be able to tell, and besides, it probably makes the sound more even, soothing and pleasant to listen.
and then for one wave get some pink noise, fade it in slowly and then out slightly quicker, speed and amplitude based on the above mentioned distribution. it would probably be handy to have an actual recording of ocean waves to look at, and see what sort of curve the general wave follows and roughly give your volume envelope the same shape.

Now layer lots of these waves together randomly, and apply your reverb.

If you want even more accuracy, there are all sorts of physical models of ocean waves available, starting out with simple stuff such as the above mentioned statistical method, but you can also actually simulate the waves if you really must

Yeah, it seems to me the individual waves build up slowly, cut back sudenly on volume, and if nearby you can hear the hissing sound of them rolling back, but that wouldn't be heard from a distance.

This whole conversation is triggering me major flashbacks to time I spent at the ocean, which is awesome.

[AFK]

One of my fondest memories was when I was in my college days, my then GF and I were visiting some friends of hers out on Hurricane Island which houses an Outward Bound program.  We spent the night in this tiny cabin that was just a few feet from this cliff overlooking the Atlantic.  Having the crashing waves as a sonic backdrop while drifting off to sleep....

Maybe it's because I've spent many years living right next to the ocean but I've not yet heard any kind of electronic recreation of ocean waves that comes remotely close to sounding like the real McCoy.